Yale Class Of Grads Addressed By Leader

University President Tells Them To Seek Beyond Immediacy

NEW HAVEN — As the students at Yale University's Class Day prepared for today's commencement, they were told to seek wider goals in society than the fulfillment of immediate career objectives.

"I imagine many of you measure the significance of your time at Yale in terms of your careers and ultimate professions, your immediate political interests, your cultural and artistic tastes, athletic prowess, capacities for friendship and the like," said President Benno C. Schmidt Jr in his baccalaureate speech. "That is fine. Yale should contribute to these evolving aspects of your lives. But Yale can mean much more for you."

In the tradition of the university's founders, he said, Yale graduates should seek freedom and justice, and work to create a good society.

He urged the students to be sympathetic, to feel diminished by the loss of a fellow human being, and to grieve.

"It is our interest in other persons and other things, a capacity which liberal learning nourishes and disciplines, that is essential to moral engagement," he said.

Calvin Trillin, a journalist, syndicated columnist, humorist and staff writer for The New Yorker, told about 1,200 graduates not to be afraid to face facts or to say things that need saying.

The graduates, attending the Class Day ceremonies Sunday that are a traditional prelude to commencement, wore an array of headgear, ranging from Mexican sombreros to cowboy hats, a turban, handkerchiefs, visors, baseball caps, a crown of flowers and a helmet. The students hooted and hollered as they made their way to seats, and families snapped photographs or pointed videocameras at family members.

A downpour, which lasted about 20 minutes, and the dramatic drop in temperature that followed did not dampen their spirits. Some spectators left during the rain but most remained. Students used paper bags to cover their heads, and some in the audience lifted their seats over their heads for cover. Others came prepared with umbrellas.

Trillin, of the Class of 1957, told the graduates that there

were many differences between his graduating class and theirs.

Everybody in his class had mononucleosis, he said, tongue in cheek: It was the diagnosis of choice, regardless of the symptoms. Trillin said he had all the signs of hepatitis, but when the doctor found out he was from Kansas City, the diagnosis was mono, he said. There was one student who fell out of a tree and apparently broke a leg, but the doctor diagnosed him with mono, he said. The mono problem disappeared, he said, when everyone quit talking about it.

Today, he said, politicians, including Presidents Bush and Reagan, have used the same device -- if a problem is not discussed, it must not exist. For instance, the conditions of inner cities were not talked about until recently, he said.

Yale graduates of today had better reflect their world, Trillin said. When he went to Yale, he said, there were perhaps a half-dozen people of color attending, including two Asians, and most of the students were male prep school graduates.

If those demographics had remained the same, he said, Yale would have lost sight of its role in society. The university, he said, would have been considered a finishing school.

"To the Yale graduate," he said, "you belong here. And if you don't, it's too late for them to find out now.